Automating Code Coverage Analysis

In the world of Agile having lean and reliable automated software testing that covers a products functionality is essential however the development process in creating, updating and reviewing these tests is often tedious and unpredictable and difficult to track as it is being developed simultaneously by multiple Scrum teams. What often results are tests that may cover the functionality of a new feature(s) but also cover functionality already covered by existing tests and thus wasting valuable test execution time by exercising the same functionality repeatedly as well as having additional maintenance costs.

Automated code coverage analysis helps to avoid much of this. By using automated code coverage analysis, software testers will know what parts of tests they are planning to automate that are already covered by existing tests and also which parts are not being covered. Engineers can find out about this before they even start writing automation code resulting in considerable time savings. Automated code coverage analysis can also be used to review existing test automation assets and determine which, if any, should be considered for merging, exclusion or retirement from automation suites. Finally, automated code coverage analysis will generate reports that will show module/classes/methods that were covered by one test and not the other, allowing engineers to better understand differences coverage and update/create tests as needed.